Take 20 wallets. Fill each with $43.77 (enough change for a TTC ride and a little extra for good measure), photo ID, baby pictures, a grocery list, receipts, a contact number, an ATM card, a fancy hankie and a handwritten love note.

Now "lose" the wallets in high-traffic areas across Greater Toronto where people work, play and pray. Now wait.

Would the one stashed beside the $197 bottle of Fonterutoli "Siepi" in the Vintages section of the Summerhill LCBO stand a better chance of being returned than the wallet dropped on the pedestrian bridge in Humber Park? Would lawyers-in-training at Osgoode Hall out-Samaritan the patrons of the Parkdale Public Library?

Over a two-week period, the Toronto Star conducted this admittedly unscientific experiment to challenge the city's honesty.

Of the 20 wallets dropped, 15 have been returned so far. We're trying to reach two additional callers who left messages before this story went to press.

The exercise yielded some surprising results. For one, honesty is different than goodness. Goodness is bigger. It's going out of one's way to return that lost item. It's empathizing with someone you've never met.

Another lost wallet sparked a fraud probe by the criminal investigation branch of the Durham Regional Police.

Dropped by the Star outside a Shopper's Drug Mart in Whitby, the wallet was found hours later, the cash surprisingly intact, a few blocks away in the parking lot of a TD Canada Trust. (We had help from TD Bank Financial, whose donation of inactive debit cards made the wallets truly authentic).

"They tried to use the (debit) card," Const. Roxanne Yelle says of the unidentified person who found it. A Whitby man picked up the wallet, discarded in the parking lot and reported it to police.

If I had truly lost my wallet and someone tried to use the debit card I would want them charged. On the other hand, if I dropped my wallet as an experiment and this led someone to be charged with fraud, I would feel very uncomfortable about having devised the experiment.

Man lives in same house for 100 years
Alfonso De Marco has lived in the same house for 100 years after arriving in England from Italy as a seven year-old.

Last Updated: 5:38PM BST 26 Apr 2009

Mr De Marco is pictured (left) with a certificate sent to him by Pope John Paul II, while (right) his father stands outside the same Eastbourne address in 1919 Photo: M&Y

Mr De Marco was born near the southern Italian city of Cassino in 1902 before moving to Eastbourne to join his father Guiseppe who had relocated to East Sussex in 1885.

They ran an ice cream parlour from the same seaside building Mr De Marco still calls home.

Upon turning 100 – and receiving a certificate from Pope John Paul II – Mr De Marco was offered the chance to live with one of his three daughters; Pierina Caira, 78, Elisa Fieldwick, 74, and Anita Dipilla, 62, but he turned them down.

The great-great grandfather said: "I love it here, it is my home. I could have moved somewhere else but I have never wanted to Â my daughters have asked me to move in with them, but I am happy here.

"The street has changed a lot since I was a boy. I remember seeing horses pulling carts up and down this street, and smelling chestnuts being roasted.

"It is different now, it is much noisier, but I still love it – there are a lot of memories for me in this house.

"My daughters grew up here, and my father lived here, so I cannot imagine living anywhere else, or anywhere better."

The house has barely changed since Alfredo first moved in with its Victorian wood-panelled exterior and single-glazed windows.

Inside, memorabilia of Alfredo's beloved Tottenham Hotspur and photographs of the family tracing right back to the early 1900s cover the walls.

Apart from brief stint doing National Service in his native Italy with the prestigious Bersagliere regiment apart, Alfredo has lived and worked in Eastbourne for the last century.

Daughter Elisa added: "The De Marco family has been in this building almost 125 years, and even though the rest of the road has changed and become more like a shopping precinct, our little house remains the same as it always was.

"The house is like another member of the family, really.

"My sisters and I all grew up here and the whole family has a great connection with the place – we all still come round here for Christmas to see him and to be in the house.

"Dad is not interested in moving Â this used to be his ice cream parlour so he is comfortable with his surroundings and the house is really an extension of him now.

"He goes into respite care every six weeks, but he is always desperate to get home."

Alfredo's eldest daughter Pierina added: "It is incredible that he has lived here for so long – there can't be many people who have lived in the same house for as long as he has.

"He can still get up and down the stairs on his own, and he still laughs and jokes about.

"His sisters lived to ripe old ages as well, so he must have good genes – either that or all the ice cream he has eaten has done the trick."

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